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Remove silences from your audio recordings

  1. Audition User Guide
  2. Introduction
    1. What's new in Adobe Audition
    2. Audition system requirements
    3. Finding and customizing shortcuts
    4. Applying effects in the Multitrack Editor
    5. Known issues
  3. Workspace and setup
    1. Control surface support
    2. Viewing, zooming, and navigating audio
    3. Customizing workspaces
    4. Connecting to audio hardware in Audition
    5. Customizing and saving application settings
    6. Perform Mic Check (Beta)
  4. Digital audio fundamentals
    1. Understanding sound
    2. Digitizing audio
  5. Importing, recording, and playing
    1. Multichannel audio workflow
    2. Create, open, or import files in Adobe Audition
    3. Importing with the Files panel
    4. Extracting audio from CDs
    5. Supported import formats
    6. Navigate time and playing audio in Adobe Audition
    7. Recording audio
    8. Monitoring recording and playback levels
    9. Remove silences from your audio recordings
  6. Editing audio files
    1. Edit, repair, and improve audio using Essential Sound panel
    2. Session Markers and Clip Marker for Multitrack
    3. Generating text-to-speech
    4. Matching loudness across multiple audio files
    5. Displaying audio in the Waveform Editor
    6. Selecting audio
    7. How to copy, cut, paste, and delete audio in Audition
    8. Visually fading and changing amplitude
    9. Working with markers
    10. Inverting, reversing, and silencing audio
    11. How to automate common tasks in Audition
    12. Analyze phase, frequency, and amplitude with Audition
    13. Frequency Band Splitter
    14. Undo, redo, and history
    15. Converting sample types
    16. Creating podcasts using Audition
  7. Applying effects
    1. Enabling CEP extensions
    2. Effects controls
    3. Applying effects in the Waveform Editor
    4. Applying effects in the Multitrack Editor
    5. Adding third party plugins
    6. Notch Filter effect
    7. Fade and Gain Envelope effects (Waveform Editor only)
    8. Manual Pitch Correction effect (Waveform Editor only)
    9. Graphic Phase Shifter effect
    10. Doppler Shifter effect (Waveform Editor only)
  8. Effects reference
    1. Apply amplitude and compression effects to audio
    2. Delay and echo effects
    3. Diagnostics effects (Waveform Editor only) for Audition
    4. Filter and equalizer effects
    5. Modulation effects
    6. Reduce noise and restore audio
    7. Reverb effects
    8. How to use special effects with Audition
    9. Stereo imagery effects
    10. Time and pitch manipulation effects
    11. Generate tones and noise
  9. Mixing multitrack sessions
    1. Creating remix
    2. Multitrack Editor overview
    3. Basic multitrack controls
    4. Multitrack routing and EQ controls
    5. Arrange and edit multitrack clips with Audition
    6. Looping clips
    7. How to match, fade, and mix clip volume with Audition
    8. Automating mixes with envelopes
    9. Multitrack clip stretching
  10. Video and surround sound
    1. Working with video applications
    2. Importing video and working with video clips
    3. 5.1 surround sound
  11. Keyboard shortcuts
    1. Finding and customizing shortcuts
    2. Default keyboard shortcuts
  12. Saving and exporting
    1. Save and export audio files
    2. Viewing and editing XMP metadata

Strip Silence allows you to identify and remove silent or inactive regions in recorded clips, without losing synchronization in multitrack audio. Use this feature for cleaning up voice recording, interviews, and preparing multi-track edits, such as podcasts or audio documentary content. Strip Silence parameters can be adjusted for unique scenarios, such as noisy backgrounds or different volume levels between participants, to easily identify and remove regions in the track that have no content, saving editors time. 

Apply Strip Silence to a track and edit the settings

  1. Before you start, make sure to be in Multitrack mode. Select Effects > Diagnostics > Deleting Silence (process). The Diagnostics panel opens on the left-side of the UI.

  2. From the Preset dropdown, select from the standard options or set the preset for your audio.

    Presets dropdown
    Presets dropdown

  3. To scan for problems in your audio track using the Deleting Silence effect, click the Scan button. To find the right levels for silence and audio in your recordings - like it used to do in waveform view, click Find Level.

  4. Below the Find Level button, you get a list of different regions that it thinks are silence in recordings along with the Start time, Duration, and Clip details.

    Detected clips
    Detected clips

  5. Once the issues are detected, you can fix them using one of the two options:

    • Strip Silence - Cut and delete the silence entirely.
    • Split Silence - Cut the clip but leave them selected so that you can verify if the right part has been selected.
    Select to Strip or split the silence
    Select to Strip or split the silence

    Tip: Strip Silence is better used in podcast interviews or audios where the silences are well-defined. For more complex audios with lesser silences and voice modulations, you may go for Split Silence.

  6. If you have multiple audio tracks and you want to apply these setting to all, select Split Scene > Split All. In the list of clips, the Split Silence only works on the selected clip. If all the clips are selected or none of them are selected, it gets applied to all the clips.

  7. The waveform shows the silence and noise in the audio. The brighter once are what it considers noise and the darker ones with waveforms are considered silence. Drag the brighter parts down to empty tracks to confirm if the selections are correct.

    Waveforms with sections selected for splitting
    Waveforms with sections selected for splitting

Edit effect parameters

Based on your audio, the Deleting Silence effect auto detects the best decibel and time settings.
You can still set the threshold manually if your workflow demands. 

Edit Effect parameters
Edit Effect parameters

To open/close the effect parameters, click the Settings button next to Scan. Adjust settings for the following:

  • Define Silence As: This feature detects silences based on the threshold. Anything that is below the threshold is categorized as silence. Drag the Signal is below slider to set the decibel manually in dB, and drag the For more than slider to set the time in ms.
  • Define Audio As: This feature detects silences based on the threshold. Anything that is below the threshold is categorized as audio. Drag the Signal is below slider to set the decibel manually in dB, and drag the For more than slider to set the time in ms.

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